Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run

Laya vs pplx-decider

Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against pplx-decider's 62.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. pplx-decider leads on schema & documentation. Both do decision models. pplx-decider is cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens.

Best decision models for AI agents · All 66 decisions comparisons

Which one, for what

Laya B

Good for Fast, cheap classification and routing on short text in many languages, as a base to fine-tune on your own labels, and as an MCP or LangGraph routing step.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 62
  • Transparency & trust, 62 against 52

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

Base checkpoints score 0.362 and 0.352 on the maintainers' typed-decisions benchmark against a 0.318 random baseline, so it needs fine-tuning

pplx-decider B

Good for High-volume classification, routing and rubric scoring over text and images where a team wants a low hosted price and the option to run the same weights itself.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 80

Also in its favour

  • Cheaper for decision models, $0 against $0 per 1M tokens
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

The Decisions API was released in October 2026, so its incident record is days long, and Perplexity's FAQ says it gives no uptime guarantee

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLayapplx-deciderEdge
Reliability16%206561Laya +4
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28090pplx-decider +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.28076Laya +4
Security & auth14%17.55761pplx-decider +4
Payments & pricing10%12.56025Laya +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88362Laya +21
Transparency & trust7%8.86252Laya +10
Negative events≤1500
Total69.2 · B62.9 · B

Facts side by side

FactLayapplx-decider
KindModel APIModel API
VendorConvai InnovationsPerplexity
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreePay per use
Price for decision modelsfreefree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0 for the published weights. The hosted Decisions API is a proprietary service
Tools exposed8none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-012026-10-05
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity29k starsnone
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Laya

Apache-2.0 code and weights, installed with pip install laya, with Python 3.10 to 3.13 tested in CI. Base checkpoints score 0.362 and 0.352 on the maintainers' typed-decisions benchmark against a 0.318 random baseline, so it needs fine-tuning.

pplx-decider

The hosted Decisions API has an OpenAPI description, typed questions, documented limits and a published price of $0.02 per million input tokens, and the v1.1 weights are public under Apache-2.0. The API is days old, the official Python SDK has no method for it, and the governing terms and privacy notice could not be read on 9 October 2026.

Before you call either

Laya

  1. Set LAYA_API_KEY before starting laya-serve. It listens on every interface by default
  2. Gate on answer_confidence, not confidence, which measures entropy and doesn't match Jev's field
  3. Shortlist choice questions with more than about 20 options using predict_shortlist or the laya_shortlist tool
  4. Use semantic or opaque labels such as A and B, not yes and no, in choice questions. The checkpoints can follow the label text
  5. Pass model="multilingual" and max_len=8192 for long documents. The English checkpoint stops at 512 tokens

pplx-decider

  1. Send Authorization: Bearer. A key in x-api-key returns 401 on this endpoint.
  2. Set model on every request. A missing or unknown model returns 400, and the guide shows a -latest name rejected.
  3. Resize images to 2,048 tiles of 32 by 32 pixels or fewer before sending. Larger images end in a 504 after about a minute.
  4. Check the HTTP status before parsing an error. 404 and 405 have empty bodies, 504 can be HTML, and error.code changes type.
  5. For the weights, use the repository's autojev code. The card says default causal inference does not reproduce the evaluated setup.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Laya or pplx-decider?

Laya scores 69.2 (B) on agent readiness against pplx-decider's 62.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. pplx-decider leads on schema & documentation.

Which is cheaper for decision models, Laya or pplx-decider?

Laya, at free against free for pplx-decider. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

Do Laya and pplx-decider need an API key?

Laya needs no key. pplx-decider needs an API key.

Can an agent call Laya and pplx-decider without installing anything?

Laya runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. pplx-decider has a hosted endpoint at https://api.perplexity.ai/v1/decisions.

Are Laya and pplx-decider open source?

Laya is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for pplx-decider.

Other comparisons with Laya or pplx-decider

Machine-readable

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